


can't keep safe what wants to break

by nevermordor



Category: Whiplash (2014)
Genre: Blood, Emotional Manipulation, Explicit Language, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Slurs, minor self-harm, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-23
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-23 00:15:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4855988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nevermordor/pseuds/nevermordor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You are so special, you know that?" his dad says.</p><p>Special. Andrew rolls the word around in his head, testing it. It feels slippery, like the punchline to a joke he doesn’t fully understand. He swallows, and the weight of it pools in his stomach. <em>Special?</em> a voice in the back of Andrew’s head sneers. It sounds uncomfortably like Fletcher.</p>
            </blockquote>





	can't keep safe what wants to break

**Author's Note:**

> How the hell is this 5k+, I need a life.
> 
> Title credits go to Jimmy Eat World and their song, "Always Be."

On the nights when he can’t fall asleep, he’ll dig to the very bottom of his desk drawer and pull out the stack of DVDs that his dad has burned him copies of: years upon years of home video, transplanted onto shiny plastic and aluminum.

Andrew sits in the dark and picks at the scabs on his hands and lets the same old scenes play out over and over again. Sometimes it’s his audition to Schaffer: him hunched over the drums, awkwardly smiling for the camera that trembles slightly in his dad’s nervous grip.

Sometimes he’s little: barely two, banging small hands against a pot, a plastic bucket, his own makeshift drum set. His dad is crouched in the background: applauding every time Andrew taps out another clutter of noise, grinning at the person behind the camera—Andrew’s mother— saying, “He wants you to hear him, Rache,” and it always makes Andrew picks a little harder at his scabs, until his hands start to bleed again, until he has the sense to finally turn the video off.

Most of the time, he’s ten years old: scrawny and grinning stupidly, sticks held poised. “Dad!” he orders. “Listen to my paradiddle!” and it’s impossible to believe he was ever that young.

It’s only a five minute video, but it’s his dad’s favorite. Every year, during the holidays his dad drinks too much and after the family’s left, he’ll make Andrew sit with him on the couch. They’ll watch together, as some other version of Andrew pounds away at a crooked drum set. “You are so amazing, you know that?” his dad will say. His face, exhausted in the light of the TV, screwed up and fighting tears. “You are so talented, Andrew.”

He remembers when that still meant something. When it was good enough.

 

 

Practice ends early on Monday. The room erupts in a flurry of papers being shuffled, cases being zipped up, muttered conversations about grabbing a drink, about catching up on sleep. Andrew’s reaching for his bag when Fletcher clears his throat. He glances at the drum section.

“Shit,” Tanner hisses under his breath.

The corners of Fletcher’s mouth tilt up, just a little. “Neiman,” he says. “Stay after.”

Andrew waits, ignoring the curious looks thrown in his direction and Tanner’s accusing stare. The rest of the band files out and Andrew keeps his head down and forces himself to stay calm: one two three, inhale. Three two one, exhale. His breath in triple meter.

“Do you know why I kept you behind?” Fletcher asks.

Andrew licks at his suddenly dry lips. “Um. I don’t—”

“You don’t have a dick in your mouth, Neiman. Don’t mumble.”

One two three, inhale: Andrew makes himself finally look up. Fletcher is maybe a foot away, arms crossed, his expression unreadable. “I don’t know why you kept me behind. Please. Tell me.” It comes out more sarcastic than he intended—Andrew nearly slaps himself, just to save them both the time and effort.

Fletcher smiles. “You don’t, huh? So you didn’t hear yourself on the kit today? You just decided to show up and fuck around and waste my time. Is that it?”

Andrew fights a cringe. Fletcher’s not wrong: he played worse tonight than he has in weeks. Not bad, necessarily, but not well. It would bother him under normal circumstances—it _does_ bother him—but his head is spinning and his thoughts slosh from side to side. He hasn’t slept in two days and the world at large drifts around him, out of reach.

“I tried my best,” he mutters to his shoes.

“‘Your best’? Well, gee. Isn’t that precious.”

Andrew’s face burns. “I’ll get better,” he says. “I promise.”

“Are you twelve, Neiman? Are you just completely fucked in the head? I don’t need promises. I need a competent drummer. Don’t make me regret putting you in core—”

“I _said,_ I’ll get better,” Andrew says sharply.

He expects Fletcher to fire back some sort of retort—expects to be hit, more than anything. For a second, Fletcher’s hand curls into a fist and Andrew hunches down, braces himself.

Fletcher’s fist uncurls; he snorts. “You’re not as good as you think you are, Neiman. Not even close.” He kicks the side of the bass drum, jolting the whole kit.

“I won’t let you down,” Andrew says.

Fletcher throws him a look of disgust. “Spare me, you fucking idiot.”

 

 

His dad calls to ask him out to dinner—a sort of belated celebration for his first concert. “This is a big accomplishment for you. We should commemorate it.” His dad sounds too bright, too cheerful over the phone. Andrew suspects a trap but his brain is water-logged from lack of sleep and it’s an effort just to twist his mouth around a casual, “Yeah, sure.” He retrieves a wrinkled shirt from a heap of dirty laundry, his one pair of khakis from where they’re stuffed at the very back of his closet.

They end up at this really nice steak house on the Upper East Side. It’s only a few blocks from Schaffer, as it turns out, and so they walk together. The evening is cool and carrying the first traces of fall on the breeze. His dad rambles on about the start of the school year and Andrew pretends to listen and thinks about the hours of practice he’s losing out on with this dinner. The waiter leads them to their table, and the restaurant buzzes with a thousand voices—his dad, excited about the décor, the waiter with the wine list, the small huddles of families and couples that press in on them from all sides—and Andrew lets it fade to white noise and calculates how many hours of sleep he doesn’t need tonight.

“So, what do you think?” his dad asks, as their waiter bustles off with their drink order.

The first shivers of music rise from a stage in the far corner: all strings, no drums. A tic of annoyance starts in Andrew’s jaw. “It’s pretty nice,” he says because he knows it’ll make his dad smile.

His dad does, indeed, smile—a little too widely. “I thought so too. I’ve been wanting to come here for years. Thought it was finally the right occasion, now that you’re a core member in your band. Pretty exciting stuff.”

“Yeah,” Andrew says. He opens his menu to avoid looking his father in the eye and flinches outright at the prices.

“Don’t worry, Andy,” his dad says quickly. “Don’t worry about the money tonight. Okay? This is all for you. You’ve been working so hard on your drumming and everything. You deserve something special.”

Special. Andrew rolls the word around in his head, testing it. Special. It feels slippery, like the punchline to a joke he doesn’t fully understand. “Okay,” he says. _Special,_ and he swallows it down, like bile. The weight of it pools in his stomach. “Okay,” he says again, to fill the void of conversation.

His dad’s smile wavers but doesn’t disappear. Their drinks come, and the waiter beams, waiting to take their order.

“It’s your night, Andy,” his dad insists warmly. “You get whatever you want.”

Andrew tries to remember the last time he ate something and comes up blank. He mutters out the name of the first thing he sees on the menu. The waiter scribbles dutifully and his dad keeps smiling and smiling with pride until Andrew cracks under the pressure and smiles back.

 

 

“What the fuck was that?”

One two three, inhale. Three two one, exhale. He read once that controlling the rate of one’s breath is the key to fighting anxiety attacks but it’s not currently working. He taps his sticks against the palm of his hand; Fletcher’s foot taps against the floor. The dissonant rhythms send his nerves skittering in every direction.

He fucked up again in practice. He said he would get better and he didn’t and here they are again, just the two of them, Fletcher glowering and Andrew unable to meet his gaze.

“Hey. Special Ed. It wasn’t a fucking rhetorical question. What was that?”

“It was ‘Whiplash’—”

“It was complete shit, Neiman, and you know it.”

Andrew doesn’t have an answer, even as he struggles for one. His mind isn’t in the studio, though, it’s somewhere else. In Brooklyn, maybe, in his old bedroom when he was growing up. Or back in that restaurant with his dad, still twisting itself around that stupid fucking word: special.

Fletcher is waiting—foot tapping, one two three, and Andrew’s brain trips, gets caught on an absurd image of Fletcher, counting down in warning, like Andrew's dad used to do when he was small and throwing a tantrum.

He feels himself smile, just for a second.

Fletcher’s foot goes still. “You think this this funny?”

Andrew’s whole body seizes with panic. “No,” he chokes out.

“Well, you’re smiling. So clearly you find something about this amusing. C’mon, tell me. What’s so funny, Neiman?” His tone is downright pleasant. Andrew’s skin crawls; his pulse jumps.

"I’m—I’m sorry,” he says.

“Oh, you’re _sorry._ Well, that changes everything, doesn’t it? You know what, Neiman? I’m sorry too. I’m sorry your fucking useless mother didn’t get an abortion while she still had the chance. Look at me when I’m talking to you, dipshit.”

Andrew lifts his head, his heart pounding in his ears. They match: Fletcher’s hands curled into fists, Andrew’s nails biting into the palms of his hands. The fear leaks from him, his chest swelling with something like anger, because nobody is supposed to talk about his mother—not him, not his father, and certainly not Terence Fletcher. It must show in his face because Fletcher’s smirk drops as their eyes meet.

“What is it with you, anyway? You think you can just do whatever you like because you managed to worm your way into core, you uppity fucking kike?” A vein pulses along the side of Fletcher’s scalp. Andrew hopes he has a goddamn aneurysm and drops dead on the floor of the studio. “You think that the whole band would collapse if motherfucking Andrew Neiman wasn’t there to save the day?”

“I already saved your ass once with Tanner, didn’t I?” Andrew retorts.

Fletcher backhands him. The force of it snaps Andrew’s head to the side and nearly knocks him off the stool. A strand of blood and saliva trickles down his chin. Andrew’s eyes are stinging—he shuts them, but there’s a hand under his chin, yanking his face up.

“I told you to look at me,” Fletcher says quietly. The grip on his chin tightens and Andrew opens his eyes, wincing at the strain in his neck. Fletcher smiles and Andrew swallows down a burst of raw panic. “Listen up, Andrew,” and Fletcher’s voice is still so soft, almost gentle. “You think you’re special?” He bites down hard on the word, spits it in Andrew’s face. “You’re not special. You’re garbage.”

_You are so special. You know that, don’t you?_

Fletcher releases him, stepping back. They study one another, Fletcher’s face still flushed with color. Andrew swallows blood and before he can think better of it, he runs a hand along his stinging cheek. He can still feel the imprint of fingers against his skin.

He kind of wants Fletcher to hit him again.

Instead he sits. He waits. He watches Fletcher watch him. The clock in the corner ticks on. It’s almost midnight.

“Anything else you’d like to say to me?” Fletcher asks finally.

“Thank you,” Andrew hears himself murmur. The words slip out. Heat rises in his face and Fletcher is still staring at him and Andrew feels the sudden urge to hide. He snatches for his book bag, stands up too fast. The stool topples over but he doesn’t bend to right it because that would put him on his knees in front of Fletcher and Andrew’s face is still burning from the slap and from something else he doesn’t want to put a name to.

He abandons the stool and hurries for the door. He makes the mistake of looking back at the last second, though. Fletcher has turned with him, his gaze following Andrew. His head is tilted a little to one side. He looks curious.

Andrew bolts; the door slams behind him, harder than necessary.

 

 

There are a hundred dollars tucked into the small envelope that his dad hands him.

They’re seeing _Bringing Up Baby_ —his dad’s favorite old-timey comedy. Andrew doesn’t feel much like laughing but he’s getting better at learning how to make himself smile on cue, and it’s taking every ounce of effort he’s got to keep smiling as he opens the envelope and stares at its contents.

“What’s this for?” he asks.

His dad shrugs, pouring Sno-Caps into their popcorn. His dad is the one who gets the popcorn now: Andrew can’t bring himself to approach the front counter, to make eye contact with Nicole anymore.

He pushes the envelope back toward his dad. “This…you really don’t…I’m okay.”

“I know,” his dad says, and what he means is, _I don’t believe you._ “It’s just a little something extra.”

“Why?” The lights in the theater dim a little; an outdated announcement about fire exit safety crackles on the screen. His dad shifts around his seat until they’re facing one another. He looks tired and Andrew wonders if he’s the reason why and then he clamps down hard on a surge of guilt.

“I guess because I thought it’d be nice? Isn’t that enough?”

 _Nice?_ a voice in the back of Andrew’s head sneers. It sounds uncomfortably like Fletcher.

His dad’s mouth quirks in a sad smile. “Sometimes, people just wanna do nice things for you. It’s how they show that they care.” He pushes the envelope back toward Andrew, just as the lights lower altogether and the movie comes to life. “Anyway. I’m just trying to help.”

Up on screen, Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn bicker. Andrew’s eyes glaze over.

His dad, in his ear: “Promise me something: don’t beat up on yourself so much?”

Andrew doesn’t promise but he nods. His dad keeps handing him the popcorn and he eats it, shoveling handful after handful into his mouth—there is no taste except a burning in the back of his throat.

The popcorn and Sno-Caps end up vomited back into his toilet later that night; the hundred dollars end up buried in the bottom drawer, beneath the stack of old home movies. Andrew curls up on his bed and tries to breathe around the hollow space in his chest that never fades, that just seems to expand little by little, eating him from the inside out.

One two three, inhale.

Three two one, exhale.

Fletcher’s voice in his ear, a soft hiss: “You think you’re special, Neiman?”

Andrew turns his face into his pillow. He shuts his eyes tight and he doesn’t let himself think, and he undoes the front of his jeans, spreads his legs, spits into the palm of his hand.

Nicole was sweet. Together, they were clumsy and slow. They would sprawl out on her bed, on Thursday nights when she didn't work, in a mess of limbs and laughter. Her hands were small and they were soft on his skin and—

And—

_You’re not special._

The memory of Nicole slips past him; her hands become large, and callused, and they press him down into the mattress until it hurts to breathe. He imagines teeth sinking into his bottom lip, imagines the sting of a slap. A smirk. A sneer.

_Neiman._

His jeans are tangled up around his knees. Blood pounds in his ears and his hips twitch and his hand moves faster. He should stop. He should stop. In his memory, Fletcher’s knuckles bruise his cheek, and Andrew’s lips move in silent prayer, thank you because Fletcher sees him, he really _sees_ him—

_You’re garbage._

Andrew comes with one last stroke. His palm is sticky, and his boxers are damp. He wipes his hand with tissues, kicks his pants off. His t-shirt clings to him, sweaty, and he pulls the sheets tight around himself.

He doesn’t sleep, but he lies very still and watches the neon numbers of the clock change shape, melt together, fade out in the slow light of morning as it trickles through the window blinds.

 

 

He’s supposed to come home next weekend—Aunt Emma is cooking her famous pot roast. His dad texts him all this as a reminder, with a _Looking forward to it!_ tacked on at the end.

Andrew is mildly astonished his uncle didn’t throw him out the dining room window the last time they invited him over. He texts back a quick _Can’t, busy weekend_ and he leaves it at that, leaves it for his dad to imagine him out in the city, hanging out with all his new friends from school.

He spends Friday night telling himself that he’ll be productive for once: he’ll make himself take a walk, he’ll try cooking dinner, he’ll shower for the first time in four days.

On Saturday, he ends up where he always does: alone. In the studio. He expected the door to be locked over the weekend but the knob turns, and he slips inside, breathing in stale air and the smell of wood varnish. The kit stands empty; Andrew tucks himself into the far corner, pulling his knees to his chest. His gaze traces over the slice of the crash cymbal, the gleaming rim of the bass drum, the worn leather of the stool. He tries to calculate how many drummers have played on this exact kit, wonders about where each of them are now, where he’ll be in two more years, after he graduates.

A migraine edges its way between his eyes, splitting his thoughts in two.

He should leave. It’s not healthy—that’s what his dad would say. “You can’t spend all your time agonizing over the future. It doesn’t change or accomplish anything. You just have to live in the present. Okay? Focus on what you have.” And then a faint smile, a ruffling of his hair, a “You’re going to be all right.”

He remembers when that was all he needed to hear; when his father’s gentle reassurance was enough. He remembers taping that first picture of Charlie Parker to his bedroom wall, and it was so easy to believe, back then, that he could be great too; that he’d be on someone else’s wall someday. That someone other than his father could give a shit about him. It was easy, and then came Schaffer, and a year of lurking in Connelly’s shadow, and that first sliver of fear, that understanding that he could be good and yet still never quite good enough.

“Well, now I know why you never seem to improve. You’re not going to get any better if you just stare at it,” Fletcher drawls, emerging from his office.

Andrew feels a stab of vicious comfort, knowing that he isn’t the only one who has nowhere else to go on a Saturday night.

Fletcher folds his arms, braces himself against the door to his office. “By all means, continue to sit there and be fucking useless. Tanner would kill to get his spot back.”

“He would, wouldn’t he?” Andrew says, his mouth breaking into an ugly smile. It comes out smugger than he means it to. His father would be appalled.

Andrew stops smiling.

“Careful, Neiman,” Fletcher says idly, arching an eyebrow. “Your ego is showing.”

“And you hate that, don’t you?” Andrew gnaws at his lower lip. “Do you hate me?” he asks. He doesn’t try to understand the reason behind the swell of hope in his chest as he waits for the answer.

Fletcher studies him. “Does it matter? Being liked is irrelevant.”

“Better to be feared than loved, huh?”

“Oh, how original. Steal that from your senior quote? Read a fucking book once in a while.”

Silence hangs between them, heavy and jagged. Fletcher isn't looking at him, his attention turned inward. Andrew pretends not to look either, but his eyes catch on the faint wrinkles in Fletcher's face; the smoothness at the corners of Fletcher's eyes and the edges of his mouth where there should be laugh lines; the faint jagged scar that runs just above Fletcher's left ear.

“You know what your problem is, Neiman?” Fletcher says. There is no edge in his voice; he sounds tired and flat. “You grew up being told that you were important. People always think that just because they happen to exist, they matter.”

Andrew looks back down at his half-tied shoelaces.

“I bet Daddy told you he loved you every single fucking day, just to make up for Mommy leaving. But no one gives a shit about you, Andrew. And they shouldn’t. You’re not owed that. You have to earn it.”

“I know,” Andrew says softly. He rubs a hand over his face, his migraine dulling briefly. Fletcher is watching him now—Andrew can feel the weight of his gaze, and he slumps further down along the wall.

“C’mon,” Fletcher says at length. “Get up.” He offers a hand. Andrew takes it hesitantly, lets himself be dragged upright. Standing together like this, it occurs to Andrew that they’re roughly the same height. It feels wrong, somehow, not to have Fletcher towering over him.

Fletcher is still gripping his wrist: not gently, not enough to hurt. Andrew doesn’t want him to let go, but he does, and Andrew sways. His vision goes lopsided from exhaustion. Fletcher’s face blurs. For a moment, Andrew imagines him smiling—just slightly.

“Get the fuck out of here, Neiman,” he says. “Practice. Or the next chair aimed at your head won’t miss.”

 

 

He practices.

He slips out of his dorm around midnight. Goes to his practice room and plays until his vision fades out, until his whole body bends and slips from the stool. His head cracks against the floor. Andrew turns his face into the carpet.

One two three, inhale: the decades of must and mold, the sweat of every drummer that came before him, that sat in his place, that believed, just like him, that they could be somebody, someday.

Three two one, exhale: he is dead skin cells, an echo of breath, a bloodstain on the carpet; a distant memory; a number; a face in a line of endless drummers that will come long after he’s gone.

I’m different, he thinks pitifully to himself.

_You’re going to be great, Andy. I know you are._

“I _will_ be the best,” he says out loud, because his dad is always lecturing him about positive affirmation. “I will be the best.” His voice breaks on the last word.

_You’re nothing. You’re nobody._

Nobody gets to be special. They have to earn it.

_You are so special._

Nice is a word for his father and his ex-girlfriend and his non-existent friends. Nice is paralysis. Nice is a death sentence.

_You’re garbage._

The walk back to his dorm is cold. Blood drips from his hands and leaves a trail along the pavement.

 

 

Fletcher has Tanner on drums all of their next rehearsal. Andrew sits to the side and turns pages and every time Tanner grins, Andrew imagines him trying to smile with his nose broken in two places.

“Not bad, guys,” Fletcher admits when they’re finally done for the evening. “Not great. Not good. But at least it doesn’t make me want to kill myself. Progress.” He smirks.

Andrew is slow to gather his things as the rest of the band filters out. Fletcher knows it too, because he pointedly turns on his heel and heads into his office. Andrew wipes sweating palms on the edge of his shirt, ignores Tanner, shuffles into the office.

Fletcher spares him a glance from where he’s looking over a mountain of paperwork. “Close the door.”

Andrew hesitates for a fraction of a second and then obeys. The door shuts behind him with an audible click.

“What do you want? Make it fast. I’m in the middle of something.”

“About the other night,” Andrew begins and then realizes he has no clue what he’s trying to say.

“What about it?”

“I practiced.”

“Mazel tov.” Fletcher’s gaze drops back to his notes.

“And that I’m sorry I’ve been screwing up lately. I just wanted you to know.”

“Well, thank you, Neiman, for the fucking newsflash. Keep practicing. Maybe I’ll consider putting you back in core. Eventually.”

“I’m out of core?” Andrew blurts out, and he hates that he can see a hint of amusement in the curve of Fletcher’s mouth. His hands twitch; he wonders how they’d look, wrapped around Fletcher’s throat. “But—but you—”

“Stop, Neiman. You’re embarrassing yourself.”

“ _Fuck_ you.”

That gets Fletcher’s attention: he sets his stack of papers to one side, the line of his shoulders tense, the same way they get right before he hauls off and hits someone. “What did you just say?”

“Fuck you.” The words only quiver a little. His heart pounds against his ribcage, hard and furious as a drumbeat. I have bled for this, Andrew thinks, his eyes stinging furiously, I have bled for _you._

“God, you’re insufferable. Like a night of practice and some pissed off little apology is supposed to excuse the way you’ve been playing like you’ve got fucking Tourette’s.” Fletcher is out of his seat and moving. Andrew takes a faltering step backwards and then another. He puts his hands up and Fletcher pushes him; Andrew’s back hits the wall.

“I’m a better player than Tanner and you know it,” he says.

Fletcher’s smile is all teeth. “You’re a backstabbing, shit-eating pansy fuck. You’re arrogant, Neiman.” He jabs Andrew hard in the chest with his finger and Andrew shoves him again.

“Don’t touch me.”

Fletcher shoves him right back; Andrew hits the wall again, harder this time, and it knocks the air from him.

“Or what?”

“I said don’t fucking touch me,” Andrew snarls. Hands close around his wrists, pinning him in place against the wall and Andrew lunges, yanking against Fletcher’s grip—and then their mouths are pressed together in something that’s almost a kiss.

Both of them go still and then Andrew jerks back. His heart skitters, sixteenth notes, rattling him. “I wanna leave,” he says faintly and Fletcher ignores him, leans in again. “No,” Andrew tries; he turns his face away and Fletcher follows and his lips are still against Andrew’s, the kiss cold and clinical. Andrew’s eyes are wide open, as are Fletcher’s, and Andrew can feel a scream rising in his throat.

This isn’t what he wanted, and he pulls, helpless, against the hands still pinning his, and ignores the thigh pressing between his legs, the solid weight of Fletcher’s chest against his.

“No,” he says again and he can’t get away, he can’t get away and Fletcher keeps kissing him and Andrew keeps letting him, and in his head, a voice keeps screaming _please please PLEASE_ and he wants more than anything to disappear.

His phone rings; the shrillness of it cuts at him.

Fletcher pauses. His grip loosens—enough that Andrew can yank himself free, can push Fletcher away with unsteady hands. He wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket and his phone keeps ringing and Fletcher is watching him.

He could let it go to voicemail.

He could.

Andrew pulls his phone out of his pocket, turns, starts running: out of the office, out of the practice room, down Schaffer’s endless, empty halls. He turns a corner sharply, bursts into the bathroom, bolts the door shut behind him.

His phone isn’t ringing anymore; his hands shake and he nearly drops it as he recognizes the number, hits redial.

His dad picks up on the second ring. “Andrew?”

“Dad.”

“What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

Andrew’s lips move, and no words come out, because if he starts to speak, he’ll start to cry and he can’t bear to let his dad hear him like this, not when he’s been trying so hard to be better, to not scare him with all the shit that’s gotten tangled up and knotted him over years and years.

“Are you sick? Are you hurt? Andrew, what’s wrong?” His dad’s voice comes across the line, small and tinny. “It’s band, isn’t it? It’s Fletcher? That—that son of a bitch.”

It’s weird, hearing his dad curse, and a sort of croaking laugh escapes him.

“Are you there?”

“I’m here,” Andrew whispers. And then louder: “I’m here.”

“Are you all right?

“I’m—I’m all right.”

“You scared me.”

“I didn’t mean to. I’m just…I wanted to hear your voice. I guess I’m…stressed.”

“Yeah. Of course you are.” A shuffle of paper in the background. His dad will be on his lunch break right now, curled up in his cramped cubicle, struggling with the daily crossword puzzle. It’s his routine: fingers stained gray from the newspaper, a half-eaten ham sandwich with mustard, a lukewarm coffee, and his dad sitting there, day after day after day until the very end.

Andrew’s stomach twists. He digs his nails into a scab and he refuses to let himself be sick.

“Who wouldn’t be?” His dad keeps going. “You’re working all the time. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard. You gotta…you gotta take care of yourself. You know? You have to be kind to yourself. Practice and work is all well and good. But it’s nothing if you can’t find some sort of balance. Take it from me.”

Andrew nearly laughs again, because there his father is, sitting in the same cubicle he’s been at for twenty years, and will be for another twenty, telling Andrew to calm down, to take it easy, even as he has the fucking nerve to call Andrew special. He wants to hurl the phone at the wall and let it shatter; he wants to scream, that’s not the point, Dad, _that’s not the point,_ because he can’t rest, not when he’s vanishing with every passing second, as the future is slipping beyond his grasp.

“You’re such a good kid, Andrew. I know you can’t always see that. I know how scary it can be, chasing your dreams. But you’ve got a lot going for you. You’re smart. You’re stubborn. And I…” His dad lets out a trembling sigh. He sounds so very, very far away. “I know you’re going to be okay. You _are_ okay, just as you are.”

Andrew’s nails dig deeper. A scab tears open. Blood is slick on his palm.

Smart. Stubborn.

_Garbage._

“Do you believe me?”

“I believe you,” Andrew says. The lie sticks in the back of his throat.

A long pause. “Maybe I could swing by later? We can get some dinner, talk some more. I’ll be off at five. Would that be good?”

A drop of blood hits the floor, marks the patchwork tiles. Andrew closes his eyes and thinks about all the old home videos still sitting in the bottom of his desk. He wants to hit rewind, wants to become small again. He wants his dad to come pick him up, to take him home, take him all the way back, to the beginning, to before all of this.

It’s too late. It’s too late.

“Andrew?”

“I—I can’t tonight. But Monday. Movie night. We can talk then.”

“Okay. If you’re sure. I love you, Andy.”

“I love you too,” he says.

Blood lingers at his fingertips.

After he hangs up, Andrew curls up on the floor. This is how he’ll die. He can see it clearly: the years slipping past, as he becomes his father, as all the fury and hate in him turns to water, fills his lungs, drowns him.

Andrew presses the heels of his hands into his eyes until light explodes and he feels like he’ll go blind.

 

 

Fletcher is still in his office when Andrew returns. There’s a flicker of surprise in his gaze, but he says nothing. Andrew closes the door behind him again. This time, he locks it.

“Tell me,” Andrew says. “Tell me what you think of me. Please.” He starts to laugh but it’s a terrible, crooked sound so he stops. “Please.”

Fletcher looks at him like he’s expecting him to run away again. At length, he takes a step forward; Andrew doesn’t flinch. He lets himself be backed up against the wall once more, lets himself be cornered.

Fletcher isn’t a big man but he feels like he should be: broad shoulders and thick arms and hands that could break Andrew into pieces. Somehow he takes up space and makes it difficult to breathe and all the while, Jim Neiman seems to get smaller every time Andrew sees him. He doesn’t want to think about his dad right now—nice, nice, so fucking nice it _hurts_ —because Fletcher is right there, eyes narrowed to slits.

“Oh, Neiman,” Fletcher says quietly, and it’s so much worse than when he screams. “You’re worthless.”

The slap comes fast, striking him across the face. Andrew’s head reels.

“You’re nothing.” Fletcher slaps him again.

_You are so talented._

Another slap. His face feels swollen and hot.

“You’re nobody.”

_I always knew you were so special._

Fletcher’s stare is like violence: it takes and takes, wearing Andrew down to oblivion.

Once, when he was little, his dad took him to Central Park. It was a hot out, and busy. Andrew wandered off to watch the street performers, the drummers pounding away on their white plastic buckets, sticks moving in rapid fire. He watched, entranced, until a hand on his shoulder yanked him from his daze and he looked up to find his dad sweating and panicked. “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” He dropped to his knees, his arms folding around Andrew, pulling him in close; Andrew’s face pressed into the lapel of his dad’s old tweed jacket, breathing in the smell of the cigarettes his father had just quit smoking, the grease of the subway, sweat from an unexpectedly warm fall day. “Andrew,” his dad whispered. “I thought I’d lost you.”

Fletcher is not gentle when he grabs Andrew’s shoulders. His embrace is too tight and the hands that run over his body are grasping and covetous and Andrew arches into their touch anyway.

His hips thrust forward to meet Fletcher’s. A mouth on the side of his neck, and teeth, and a whisper: “You’re so pathetic. You’re disgusting.”

Andrew pants, swallows a moan, lets the hands pull him apart, lets himself be taken.

**Author's Note:**

> But seriously, thanks for reading. I'll try to post the next chapter with (relative) speed.
> 
> Also, if you ever wanna hit me up, I'm on tumblr, also as nevermordor. We can chill. It'll be fun.


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